This company, ABOAFSITE, produces and commercializes natural gum base, which is much in demand these days. You can check www.natural-chicle.net .They claim all the healthy benefits of using a natural product. They can also produce the final chewing gum itself (private label). In fact some of the companies that I have mentioned in previous posts appear in their website: Humble and Co, Simply Gum, etc..).

The company supplies natural gum base in different formats (slab or powder) and versions (different molecular weight). The prices are also in the website.

There you can also find some interesting videos where you can see the real Sapotilla tree (where it all begun!!!) and some ideas and recipes to make different types of gum, always using their natural gum base. The natural claim is followed by a “non machinery” claim, which involves making the gum by hand. At the moment the market share of these chewing gum brands are tiny, but there are more and more players joining the wave and some of them a getting bigger. Then manual production will be a limitation and machinery needs to be considered if relevant amounts have to produced.

I hope you find this interesting, as this is one of the most powerful trends in the market today. Not only in the chewing gum industry, but in the whole food products: Everybody goes crazy for “Natural”, which is automatically associated with “Healthy” (something that I am not sure always works….).

Today is the last post about chewing gum companies that I visited in ISM. And today’s company is an important one: Chocolat Frey is an institution in Switzerland and abroad. They produce chocolate (their main product, as the company name indicates) and chewing gum. It was founded back in 1887 (!) and employs about 870 people today. The production of chewing gum started in 1974. It belongs to the mighty Migros group. One can feel the presence of Migros almost everywhere in Switzerland. You can read more about the company in their web-site: www.chocolatfrey.ch and even in wikipedia. However they have their own website specifically designed for chewing gum: www.chewinggum.ch

In terms of chewing gum, they have their own brands (SKAI and CANDIDA) but the company is strong in production for private label. This ISM they presented premium coatings with different colours. Their dragees are excellent and they have in their range sugarfree bubble gum dragees, which is not common at all! Chocolat Frey also offers many types of packaging: blister, sleeve, flip-top box, zip bag, plastic bottles… All their products are sugar free and they have dental chewing gums which contain different active ingredients which make the product (e.g. Candida) a functional gum.

This company, founded in 2005 (although with origins dating back to 1916!) and located south of Barcelona, is not a chewing gum producer. They are experts in licorice and also in tabletted products (both dextrose and sugar free). They launched some products in those fields last ISM.

The company employs 10 people and it is managed by Mr Javier Torrents (to who I thank for his time during the Fair). I mention them here because they distribute chewing gum. They have an interesting format: small tins that make them suitable for private label. You can see here one of them (Bad Toro) and some other examples:

In those tins they can put chewing gum or many other confectionery products.

You can read more about the company and find their catalog in their web-site: www.saetsweets.com